Colorado Rockies General Manager Dan O'Dowd listens in during a press conference with Colorado Rockies Troy Tulowitzki announcing an a contact extension November 30 2010. Tulowitzki's contract adds seven years to an existing agreement with the club. John Leyba, The Denver Post

When Dan O’Dowd was hired as the Rockies’ general manager at the end of the 1999 season, he announced, “Our goal, very simply, is to put a championship-contending club on the field each and every year.”

But the Rockies have missed the playoffs in 10 of O’Dowd’s 12 seasons as GM, and in eight of those the team wasn’t even competitive.

In Denver, where fans have grown accustomed to winning — the Broncos have won two Super Bowls, the Avalanche have won the Stanley Cup twice, the Nuggets have made the playoffs nine straight seasons — fielding a perennial loser doesn’t cut it.

O’Dowd has failed. He needs to go.

Such a move would demonstrate to Rockies fans who continue to pour into Coors Field that the team is indeed serious about building a perennial contender and not simply operating Wrigley Field West.

The problem is, the team’s ownership seems blindly loyal to O’Dowd, who has the fourth-longest tenure among baseball GMs. (Full disclosure: The Denver Post is a limited partner in the team. There is, of course, nothing more limited than a limited partner in baseball.)

“I can’t think of a general manager in baseball that’s as good as him,” said Dick Monfort, the Rockies’ chief executive, earlier this year.

What in the name of purple mountains’ majesty? Has Monfort lost his mind? Here’s what O’Dowd has done wrong, Mr. Monfort:

First off, he squandered a good team by abandoning the Blake Street Bombers and building the Rockies around pitchers Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle, who ultimately failed miserably after signing huge contracts. Strike one.

Then, after recovering from that debacle, he squandered another good team, the one that reached the 2007 World Series. (Rocktober, we hardly knew ye.) Strike two.

And this season has shown he clearly doesn’t know where to take the team. Giving Jim Tracy — a good man but an uninspiring manager — a handshake agreement to keep him “indefinitely” makes no sense. And O’Dowd’s bizarre “paired pitching system,” which seems like a desperate move by someone who has run out of real ideas, has resulted in more of the same: losing. Strike three.

With the All-Star break starting after today’s game against Washington, now is the perfect time to make a change.

In baseball, it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out. Dan O’Dowd has had at least that many. He clearly should be out.

There’s been way more than enough written about Donald Trump’s battle with kneeling football players — especially with a major crisis underway in Puerto Rico — but one thing really does bother me that’s been revealed during this brouhaha: the extent to which many Americans have accepted the anti-democratic and false equivalence of patriotism and the military.